Get a Head Start On the 49th New York Film Festival

Get a Head Start On the 49th New York Film Festival

Get a head start on the 49th New York Film Festival (it kicks off today) by checking out reviews of some of the big films playing at the event and interviews with some of this year’s talent.

Below is a list of prior articles we’ve published about films that are appearing at the NYFF. Click on the film’s title for the full piece.

The 49th New York Film Festival runs through October 16. Go here for the complete lineup.

Reviews

“Footnote”Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar’s last feature, the Oscar-nominated “Beaufort,” was a tense war movie about the 2000 South Lebanon conflict. His latest effort, “Footnote,” involves a much more personal war, in which the opposing sides are a father and his grown son.

“Goodbye First Love”Unfortunately, since Hansen-Love never stays far from observing her delicate heroine, “Goodbye First Love” lacks a dramatic edge to keep up with its profound characterizations.

“Martha Marcy May Marlene”Appearing fragile and terrified from her first scene until her last, Elizabeth Olsen brings an alarming quality to writer-director Sean Durkin’s quietly unsettling “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“Melancholia”The basic premise of “Melancholia” bears a marked similarity to “Another Earth,” the Sundance hit about a duplicate planet appearing next to our own. However, while that movie exudes an optimistic vibe about the prospects of discovering new life, the giant rock in “Melancholia” never takes on an identity except as an object of otherworldly beauty and insurmountable doom.

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”A slow-burn study of investigatory obsession and police bureaucracy, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s mesmerizing “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” plays like “Zodiac” meets “Police, Adjective.”

“Policeman”Everyone seems lost in Nadav Lapid’s “Policeman” (“Ha-shoter”), an unsettling story of brawny Israeli anti-terrorist officers and the equally clueless activists they’re eventually tasked with hunting down.

“Shame”While “Hunger” contained an extensive monologue explaining the character’s behavior, “Shame” leaves much of Brandon open for interpretation. As a result, Fassbender’s revealing and compelling performance doesn’t just dominate “Shame;” he defines it.

“The Artist”The real star of the show is director of photography Guillaume Shiffman. If “The Artist” gains any commercial traction, Shiffman ought to get the most of its success. Shooting in a 1.33 ratio and imitating the complex grey scales of innumerable silent traditions—from German Expressionism to the shadowy American noir look that came out of it—Shiffman provides the foundation for the movie’s appeal.

“The Loneliest Planet”In “Day Night Day Night,” Julia Loktev told the quietly experimental tale of a young would-be suicide bomber nervously wandering through the crowd of Times Square, impressing some critics if not much of an audience beyond that. Her long-awaited follow-up, “The Loneliest Planet,” deals with noticeably broader terrain and even includes a mid-size star (Gael Garcia Bernal).

“The Kid With a Bike”Acting, like in all Dardenne films, can’t be faulted, and De France occasionally even sounds refreshingly Belgian (in French films she usually has a flat, non-regional French accent). However, her character’s consistently sunny, Mother Teresa-like disposition might be a tad much for lovers of bleaker fare.

“The Student”A speedy depiction of university politics and the spirited radicalism associated with them, “The Student” (“El estudiante”) announces 31-year-old Argentinean filmmaker Santiago Mitre as a South American Aaron Sorkin.

“This is Not a Film”Jafar Panahi has taken risky circumstances and turned them into art. “This is Not a Film” delivers a sharp, measured critique of the conditions that now find him on his way to jail.

“The Descendants”Family dramas based around the recent or impending death of a relative tend to aim for easy sentimentality or wallow in grief. Alexander Payne courts these dangers many times in “The Descendants,” but manages to avoid the trappings of formula.

“The Skin I Live In”Based on Thierry Jonque’s novel “Tarantula,” Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Skin I Live In” is a medical revenge thriller about genre identity. It’s also a meandering, tonally confused work.

FUTURES | “Martha Marcy May Marlene” Actress Elizabeth OlsenYou know, when you go to NYU and you’re a theater student, you have conservatory and you have academics. So already you’re a balancing an intense and crazy schedule with academic classes. So you kind of already figure out how to multi-task. The only thing that sucks is that NYU isn’t allowing me to work while being in school so I have to actually take time off when I want to work. That’s what’s frustrating. I wish there was a way to work it out, but there isn’t.

INTERVIEW | Lars von Trier: “I will never do a press conference again.”It was believed in the old days that melancholic persons can do more than ordinary people. The film is based on psychologists’ findings that in a crisis like the one in the film, a melancholic person would act in a more practical manner, because they’ve been there before. I have some relatives who have experienced melancholia in their lives, and they said the film hit them as correct.

Lars von Trier on ‘Melancholia’: “Maybe it’s crap”“It was a big pleasure to do the film,” added von Trier. “All this darkness stuff we put in, we got carried away. Everything got over romantic, but it was nice to do. When I saw the stills from it, I kind of rejected it a bit. So, I’m not really sure…”

INTERVIEW | “Shame” Director Steve McQueen: “We have to keep cinema alive.”Following Venice with stops in Telluride and Toronto, the film rode a wave of buzz to become one of the fall festival circuit’s most notable acquisitions as Fox Searchlight picked it up in something of a surprise move given its certain-to-get-an-NC-17 content. McQueen discussed Searchlight’s plans for the film – and many other things – when he sat down with indieWIRE in Toronto earlier this week.

Comments

Dana Harris
May 12, 2016 4:36 pm

Hi, Brian. we do take our work seriously — but each of the sentences in the article are only sample of the larger works (each film title in blue links to a previously published article). This I’ve added a sentence to clarify that in the piece.

what a disservice you guys do to the films and the festival itself by posting poorly written synopses/reviews of the festival offerings – who is writing/editing this stuff? – you are a well read, generally well-regarded outlet but come on, you can do better than this – comparing MELANCHOLIA to ANOTHER EARTH? Seriously? And the nuances of Cecile De France’s Belgian/French accent is your review of one of the Dardennes best received films? The “bouncy” soundtrack is really the lead item for LE HAVRE? please take seriously what you do and try not to be so clever and glib